Twenty-four to One

Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity and in sin my mother conceived me. Psalm 51:5  NASB

Sin – We all know that Hebrew and Greek have many words for “love.”  Both languages make distinctions that can’t be captured in a single English word.  In order to understand what the Scripture says, we have to know if the word is agape or phileo, ahav or doth.  The same caution must be applied to the word for “sin.”  The family of Greek words from the stem adikia (unjust, wrong, unrighteous) translates twenty-four different Hebrew words for what we call “sin.”  That’s right!  Hebrew makes twenty-four distinctions for our single concept.  When you read the English word “sin,” which of the twenty-four words are you reading in Hebrew?  If you don’t know, how can you determine what the author is really saying?

In this most-famous verse, the Hebrew word translated “sin” is hete.   This noun means sin, an offense, or a fault.  “It suggests the accumulated shortcomings that lead to punishment . . [or] errors and offenses that cause the wrath of a supervisor  . . [or something] contrary to the Law.”[1]

Wait a minute!  David writes about hete at conception.  How can hete be true of any newborn?  When did the infant accumulate shortcomings, offend a supervisor, or violate the Torah?  Even more impossible, when could any of these be true at conception?  Obviously, they are not true when sperm meets egg.  Something else must be behind David’s woeful complaint.

When we look at the Semitic languages, we find they all share a root – ht’ – that conveys the following general meaning:  “to commit an offense against someone with whom one stands in an institutionalized community.”[2] In other words, words derived from this root imply behavior that goes against the established norms of the community, behavior that excludes the person from cultic participation.  To this we must add the fact that in Hebrew the action includes the associated consequence.  It is as if the deed surrounds people like a shell, preventing them from interacting normally within the community.  They are excluded by the very deed they performed.  That’s why the Greek equivalents are often associated with the idea of religious defilement.  This kind of sin removes us from entering God’s presence.

Now think once more about this verse.  David’s lament springs from his present defilement.  He is completely aware that his sin has removed him from God’s presence.  From the perspective of his current punishment, he looks back over his life.  He sees the stream of actions that brought him to this place without God and he cries out that everything that has happened seems to have contributed to his present defiled state.  In fact, he peers even deeper than the moment of his birth.  He looks all the way back to the moment of his conception.  Even then, before any decision had occurred, he can see now the forces that worked on him so that on this day he would stand defiled before God.

In the Psalms, the Hebrew word hete is found almost exclusively in cries of woe.  This is also important because it captures a uniquely Hebrew view of human existence.  Human beings do not exist as isolated individuals.  They are intimately connected to other people in two important ways:  first, as members of an existing inter-related community, and second, as the summation of an  historical lineage.  You and I are connected because we share a common community – and you and I are connected to our own unique ancestors.  We are the end of a long line of God’s interactions with men.  Because this is true, sin (hete) entangles us both presently (in community) and historically (in the sins of my ancestors).  Hete is the word of supreme consciousness of these two entanglements.  It is the Hebrew word that recognizes the power of sin in family, sin that affects me because of the actions of my parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, etc.  In order to understand what David says, and what he is psychologically experiencing, we must carefully distinguish all the nuances present in the Hebrew words translated by the single English word “sin.”

Does David say he was born sinful?  I don’t think so.  I don’t see any way to understand hete in that fashion.  What I see is a thoroughly Hebrew view of community and family inclusion.  David is the product of a parentage that reaches back through his entire tribe to Judah.  David’s actions, not his birth, have removed him from his community and reminded him of his ancestors’ past sins.  There is a wall around him.  He sees all the contributing factors, not determining factors, and he cries, “If only things would have been different!”  But they weren’t – and that’s what he feels in this tragic phrase.

Can’t you feel David’s agony?  Haven’t you been in the place where to look back, perhaps as far back as your own conception, and you see that the course of your life has lead to this moment of despair.  Yes, you could have chosen otherwise.  Yes, you are still accountable.  But isn’t there at least one poetic sense in which the circumstances of your birth set you on a course that lead to this tragic end?  Did it have to be this way?  Of course not.  But now when you look back, can’t you see the threads that brought you to this place?

I think David can see those threads.  He can see that he did not resist when the yetzer ha’ra gripped him.  He can see the choices made year after year that eventually led him to be defiled.  And if we stand in David’s sandals, I’ll bet we can see them too.

Topical Index:  sin, hete, Psalm 51:5